The Story Behind Why I Am Not A Democrat...

I have kept this story fairly tame, not mentioning names or even localities, though those who knew me back in the day can likely guess who the principals are. I have not had contact with most of the people involved since the early 90s so I am not even sure what became of these people except the candidate.  I usually like to write with humor, sadly this story is not a funny story and has bothered me for years. Thus making this one of the more difficult things for me to speak or write on. Though there is a crime described here, the statute of limitations ran out long ago.

Let’s flash back to Fall in the late 80s. I am in early high school, my mom and sister had become involved in the local Democratic Party and a local election. Being fairly new to town, I decided to get involved as well. The campaign itself was fun, it was a hard fought campaign between a Democratic lawyer and an incumbent Republican who was retired military. On election night, the Democrat, on whose election I was working, won by an unofficially narrow 17 votes on a bad election night for Democrats nationally.

I had met many people from the various constituency groups of the Democratic Party. Some were from ACORN, some local community activists, some were the old guard anti-establishment movement from the 60s, and others fought for civil liberties. From the deep Democratic establishment to some of the fringe elements, it was a motley crew, but somehow we all worked together pretty well.

The Republican naturally filed for a recount due to the closeness of the original count. The Saturday after the election, some of us gathered at the house for a barbeque.  I got there fairly early and found 3 of the campaign team in the back yard standing around the grill and I saw them put some paper in the grill. I just thought they were putting some kindling on the coals though it was pretty early to start the fire.

I walked up behind them and said “Hey guys, what’s up?” They all seemed surprised and rather uncomfortable that I was there. I may be slow on the uptake sometimes, but I could tell something was going on. One of the people by the grill tried to usher me away before I saw what was going on. However, before they could lead me away one of the others by the grill said, “here stoke the fire,” he handed me the poker. So I did, all that was in there at the time was smoldering ashes. He bellowed, “we are gonna make sure that bastard does not win”. With that I looked down in the bag by the grill to see completed absentee ballots, a couple dozen of them… easily enough to have switched a 17 vote margin. The amount of ashes seemed to show they had been there a while and at least a couple dozen ballots had already met their untimely end.

The guy must have seen the look on my face because he said, yeah these are ballots we picked up from people we believe or know voted Republican. They could tell I was not feeling very comfortable about it. The guy said well you are now a part of this so don’t tell anyone… he left all implications of what would happen hang in the air. Noting the ashes were dying down he picked up another stack of ballots and tossed them in, squirted some lighter fluid and tossed the match… Whoosh! 6 or 7 more people had their votes burned.

Now the question is, did the candidate know. I do not know for sure, I suspect he had some knowledge, it happened at his house, though he was not home at the time. But someone or several people who collected absentees had pre-planned this. (Back in the 80s, in this jurisdiction, it was common for campaigns to solicit absentee ballots and pick them up for delivery to the County Clerk) However, I do not have any direct knowledge to implicate the candidate in the crime. In the end, the recount showed the Democrat winning by 172 votes. That amount, I believe, ended up being more than the ballots burned.

I realize now I could have walked away immediately but by the time I realized what had happened, my hands were dirty, so to speak. Coupled with the unspoken threat, these people were almost my entire social circle. Yes, I know I needed better friends, but at that time I was happy for any. For a time I did try to justify it by saying we made sure the right guy won. However, deep down this was all a lie. Eventually other life events supplanted this by importance, over the next year I watched cancer destroy my father. I got involved in High School and I worked other Democratic campaigns over the next couple years but always seemed to have people with the same attitude to win no matter who gets hurt. 

I eventually became a Republican, though many of the issues I did not like with Democrats were also present in the GOP. I will give a more in depth examination of why I left the Republicans at another time.